3 1 2 NOTES. 



was a placoid fish. Taught by this misadventure that an 

 auti-Lamarckian is by no means infallible when he rushes 

 from one isolated and hastily-observed fact to a great con- 

 clusion, / claim a right to pause before admitting this lignite, 

 lest it also should prove to be a 'misplacement.' The fossils 

 of fish which Professor Sedgwick so exultingly announced 

 from the Wenlock limestone, and which he could not doubt 

 because he had * seen' them, turned out to have been found, 

 not in the rock, but in the loose debris of a quarry, where it 

 was most likely they had been dropped by some workmen 

 who had brought them from another place ! When we turn 

 to Mr Miller s account of the circumstances under which the 

 lignite were discovered, we certainly do not find any strong 

 assurance against a similar mistake. * I found it,' he says, 

 ^partially embedded, with many other nodules half-disinterred 

 by the sea, in an ichthyolitic deposit a few hundred yards to 

 the east of the town of Cromarty, which occurs more than 

 four hundred yards over the great conglomerate base of the 

 system !' We at least owe him thanks for his candour in 

 the statement of the history of this fossil." 



We must be allowed to remark on the diflferent parts of 

 this paragraph in succession. First, as to the fossil flora. 

 The " highest authority" on the subject here referred to is, as 

 we find from No. 9 of the Proofs annexed to the " Vestiges," 

 M. Adolphe Brongniart. M. Brongniart, we are told, holds 

 as doubtful most of the alleged instances of plants of the Car- 

 boniferous era found below the zone of the Coal formation. 

 But all authorities, even the highest, must yield to the inex- 

 orable development of fact. It is now held that the Old Bed 

 of Caithness, so far from holding no land plants, contains no 

 other, and that all remains of algae are entirely wanting in 

 it. (See latest edition of Sir B. Murchison's " Siluria.") 

 This condition of the Old Bed flora had not been ascertained 

 when the Appendix to the " Yestiges" was written; and the 



